tala's depression survival guide
Battling depression is a skill.
After my diagnosis, I spent months desperately seeking a cure. I have often analogized depression to a physical illness, say the flu, in the context that mental illness necessitates equal attention as the latter. But it doesn’t mean they are cured similarly. Depression isn’t a temporary illness that immediately fades with few days of care, not a fever or a sore throat. No, it ebbs and flows. Some days you will feel better; others, you will pray the earth swallows you whole.
It is a neck-to-neck battle against your mentality, and you have to win it.
This is a survival guide, but, still, I will not state the obvious – exercise, meditate, meet friends. Sometimes when you are in the depths of hell, in depths of such mental anguish, the mere thought of leaving your room feels unbearable. In these days, I don’t expect you to exercise. Hell, I don’t even expect it from myself.
In an episode, I usually let myself dwell for a set of time. Be it hours, days, a week – depending on the severity of the episode – I allow myself to uninterruptedly wallow in my agony, before I start prompting some sort of recovery. I tell myself: you have six full days where you can rot in bed and be as miserable as you want.
This way, I am not gambling on just randomly snapping out of it, yet at the same time, I am not suppressing any negative feelings that I know would otherwise erupt later. Because when you are depressed, your brain tricks you into thinking that this mental state is your comfort zone, that it where you now belong. You have to remind yourself, clinging to all the sanity you have left, that this will not be your norm forever.
After my set-wallowing-time, I tend to start moving around. No more sitting on the bed. I will sit at my chair, in front of my desk. I will lie on the couch in the living room. Heck, I will rest on the floor, but I do my best to avoid the bed. Because even a small change of scenery can start to help, like I am breathing in new life.
This is where I try to start taking small action. When I say small, I mean small. 1%, even less, as depression makes it impossible to carry out our normal tasks at full capacity. Depression made me neglect writing? I make it a goal to write one single sentence. I haven’t moved in a week? I will aim for 10 steps. The trick here is to choose one minuscule goal to focus on per day. This way, you alleviate the intimidation of having to perform some kind of daunting, endless to-do list. Soon, you will notice these 1% goals compounding day by day. It is likely you will feel accomplished.
What makes depression so dangerous is not that the condition itself, but it’s getting out of it. Depression makes it easy to hide in that dark hole after making the smallest of progress, but you have to hang in there. You have to find the skills that work for you.